The pros and cons of president Trump
I hate to admit it, but over the last year or so I have generally become ignorant of current events since I'm living/renting from a place where the other residents monopolize the living room and TV 24/7 (in order to entertain their 1 year old and his disabled grandfather who watches him much of the time). That plus I have other issues I usually have to attend to, so I rarely have the time and motivation to even catch up on the news on CNN, if you can still call what they put out as actual "news".
What little I know of Trump is that it is almost a given that he is a plutocrat and very unlikely to have any idea of what it is like to deal with the struggles of regular people, however even with that issue he is really neither a democrat or republican which for me (I consider myself a independent even if I often vote democrat), being able and willing to be a sore to both established parties is a good thing. The only other thing is that he seemed to be a loose cannon and a narcissist, although the late may be true of almost every plutocrat. I was not really happy or really sad when Trump won since all I hoped was that none of the other republicans would win, and if Hilary had won America would just have another 4-8 years of the party of "no" from the republican party which may not be much better than what we have now.
As I said I know barely anything of what Trump is really like or how well he is doing things and I'm just sort of interested in what other forum members think of him and/or how he is doing.
What little I know of Trump is that it is almost a given that he is a plutocrat and very unlikely to have any idea of what it is like to deal with the struggles of regular people, however even with that issue he is really neither a democrat or republican which for me (I consider myself a independent even if I often vote democrat), being able and willing to be a sore to both established parties is a good thing. The only other thing is that he seemed to be a loose cannon and a narcissist, although the late may be true of almost every plutocrat. I was not really happy or really sad when Trump won since all I hoped was that none of the other republicans would win, and if Hilary had won America would just have another 4-8 years of the party of "no" from the republican party which may not be much better than what we have now.
As I said I know barely anything of what Trump is really like or how well he is doing things and I'm just sort of interested in what other forum members think of him and/or how he is doing.
Comments (144)
I think Trump will be the worst US President ever. Interesting times.
I know, it's very optimistic to say that, but I will say so.
At least he's made it obvious that the unwritten rules need to be written. It's like the financial crisis making it clear that banks need special safeguards in place.
He's doing what a President should do, which is not being a slave to the media and to what other people think of him, and standing up for what he believes in, even when it's unpopular.
He reminds me of a wanna-be mob boss, aspiring to be Putin like, a patriarchal conservative monarch of the plutocratic elite. Anecdotes about his character are seldom flattering.
It's funny how it's okay (unstoppable) that currency can pass all boundaries and limits for the process of wealth accumulation but people cannot.
Larger problems:
One is that it is difficult for many people to identify what kinds of social and economic policies are in their best interests. The difficulty is the result of many changes in American business practice, industry, demographics, and politics.
Another is that politics should clearly represent the interests of its constituencies. This may never have been true, but it certainly is not true now. Instead, politics (parties, candidates, conventions, campaigns, official and unofficial congressional activities, etc.) misrepresent and subvert its constituencies' interests.
The average citizen can not readily lay his hands on accurate, relevant information. Reading the daily newspaper, the regular broadcast news, or news feeds amount to an intake of flak designed to distract and misdirect. Politicians of every stripe are able to surf over the waves of uncertainty, misinformation, non-information, and conflicting information.
Trump could be switched with any number of other politicians without producing noticeable differences.
Pro: makes for good satire.
I think we see politicians keeping strictly to party lines, even when the party's lines may not represent the interests of a given constituency. This is true of both parties, and it flows from local politics to national politics. If you want to get ahead, and become reelected you must tow the party line or else.
Very few representatives are willing to risk the disfavor of their Party:
Trump tweeted:
Standing up for your constituency may have adverse consequences personally and in the case of Trump it could effect your constituency directly.
This is sad.
Agustino, surely you can't be serious with this rubbish statement.
I agree with Augustino insofar as Trump has the integrity to stand up for what he believes in and ACT not talk. What comes out of his mouth is what he actually thinks and I find that very refreshing indeed. His prompt executive decision to ban Muslim immigration into the US got a big "thumbs up" from me, just a shame that he was ultimately prevented from fully implementing/ extending the policy on a permanent basis by the spineless liberal legal establishment opposing him . Muslims, by definition, VOLUNTARILY adhere to Koranic Sharia Law and the barbaric articles of this primitive legal code have no place whatsoever in a (relatively) civilised modern democracy like the US, FULL STOP . Likewise , Trump's swift retaliation with Tomahawk missiles against that lying, evil Syrian bastard , Assad, who used Sarin nerve gas against his own people had me cheering in the living room when the news came down the wire. Just a shame, once again that he couldn't go further and send in some Special Op troops to put a bullet through that animal's head. As for the ISIS terrorists in the Middle East, it is a concrete cold fact that the American intelligence agencies know right now almost literally down to a man EXACTLY WHO they are and EXACTLY WHERE they are, I think Trump would very much like to send in US ground forces and mow down every last one of these vermin a sap, let's hope he does!
Regards
John
Yeah, Rule of Law is pretty overrated.
Why not? :P
The Law is an ass ( haven't you heard?)
Regards
John
September's going to be a huge challenge, what with the terrifying possibility of an actual nuclear war and the possibility of deadlock in the House over the Budget and US Debt Limit. If you have a 'survival plan', now is the time to blow the cobwebs off it.
@Agustino - don't bother.
Ballooning debt
Increasing poverty
Degrading environmental protections (locally and globally)
Encouraging xenophobia
Legitimizing vulgar discourse
Legitimizing corrupt business practices
Attacking freedom of the press
Excessively increasing military spending
Decreasing security (e.g. increasing threat of nuclear war)
Disregarding honesty / integrity of office
Delegitimizing judiciary / constitutional checks and balances
Pros:
Entertaining
Have you been tuning in to fake news? X-) I mean, for example, not enough time has passed yet for him to have increased or decreased poverty in the first place. That's certainly too early to judge.
>:)
Of course, maybe they're lying. But if Trump believes them then that's a big con. Would he put his own self interests above those of the US?
Quoting Agustino
lol. So you would presumably have no objection in the unlikely event that Trump said he had converted to being a diplomatic moderate who was sensitive to the perception of the international community as represented by the media and would seek the endorsement of Obama on every issue.
After all, he should only stand up for what he believes in, even if its unpopular.
Yes, it was fake news that made me think Trump's budget included over a trillion dollars in cuts to anti-poverty measures. That and reading from the actual budget. I would have thought as a supposed Christian a proposed attack on the most vulnerable in society in order to fund tax cuts for the rich and increased military spending might bother you...(Just kidding. I knew you wouldn't care. What's important is Trump is rude and loud and hates lefties).
Pros:
???????
The hypocrisy is mind boggling but uncomfortably not surprising.
The issue is a lot more complicated than your simplistic picture. Yes he does cut out budgets for several state programs that were meant for the disadvantaged, but he also finances some other programs. For example, he cuts out after-school programs that are meant to educate disadvantaged children so that they do better in school, and replaces it with a $1.4 billion in-school program. And so on so forth. America needs a budget cut. It seems to me that only someone financially illiterate can suggest otherwise. Here's a summary:
Are you trying to defend him or bury him? You realize that all that red is intended to finance tax cuts for the rich and that the debt is projected to increase right??
The US needed budget cuts even if we were to ignore the tax cuts that Trump seeks to introduce. Also tax cuts aren't just for the wealthy.
So the so called tax cut for the rich that you're crying about is actually just a 4.6% cut in tax. Also the 35% tax applies at earlier points than before.
I get a feeling you're just being paranoid.
Do you read your own posts? The poorest will gain a measly 100 bucks each on average (or pay 380 more, which they can't afford). The richest will gain 20,000 bucks more each on average (which they don't need, or pay 3990 more, which will make hardly a difference to them). Also, it's the richest three bands that have the highest percentage of beneficiaries as well as the highest net benefits. That equates to tax cuts for the rich, or if you want to be more precise, tax cuts overwhelmingly aimed at benefitting the rich.
Yeah of course, because their income is already small! When you apply a percentage to a small income, you're not going to get a huge dollar amount return will you?!
Yes, ONLY 6.8% of the poorest 20% will get that $380 tax increase that you're talking about. That is very unfortunate, but one would hope that growths in the job market and salaries can offset that if the economy starts doing better.
Quoting Baden
No, as far as I see it, 64.5% of the poorest 20% also get a tax break - that is most of them. And only 6.8% of the poorest see their taxes go up, while 26.9% of the richest 20% will see their taxes increase. That seems quite fair to me.
It seems quite fair to you to give huge amounts of money in tax cuts mostly to rich people who don't need it and pay for that by cutting anti-poverty programs by 1.74 trillion + cuts to education, health etc... If that seems fair to you, you have a very perverse view of fairness.
Did you not read that 26.9% of the richest 20% will actually see their taxes go up?
Did you not read that 22% of the next bracket of rich will see their taxes go up?
And no - it's by far not mostly rich people. If you count all the rich people that get tax breaks you'll see it's fewer than the poor. Now, if you count dollar amount of tax breaks, of course the rich will get more than the poor, but their incomes are also a lot larger.
And I don't really agree with super high taxes for the rich. For example, I'm someone who spends a lot of time working, studying and learning. If in 20-30 years time I happen to be lucky to be a rich person, I don't want high taxes, because why should I pay high taxes? I spent my time working while other people were laughing the days away, drinking, partying, etc. Why should my money be taken by the state to go towards financing them?! While they were working 8 hours a day, I worked 12! I worked weekends too! I dedicated myself to learn a lot, become productive for society, and give back something of value to the world. In the meantime they dedicated their time to who knows what, buying cigarettes, buying alcohol, living the life of a consumer, watching TV etc.
In addition, if I do end up rich, there's the problem of why should the state be an administrator for my wealth? The state didn't produce that wealth - why should they get to decide what gets done with it? I should do that, because I've proven myself capable to create it. I should start my own programs to give to the poor, and the state should not tax me anymore. They should give me full tax breaks so long as I give a certain amount of my income to the poor! That's how it should be done, and I should decide what and to whom I give, because I clearly am a smart guy, not a dummy politician who can barely add 2 and 2 together and spends his time watching porn in Congress...
The problem is that all of us have learned to treat the government like a Big Daddy that is supposed to take care of us, while we misbehave. That's wrong. People are supposed to take care of each other, not governments. As far as I'm concerned, the government is an evil.
(Edit) Yes, and 35.5% of the poorest will either see their taxes go up or get nothing.
+Most (65%) of those earning 25,000 or less will get a tax break of 100 bucks. Less than 1%. Most (73%) of those earning over 150,000 will get 20,000 on average, the exact percentage depending on how much they earn but likely significantly higher than 1% for most of them.
Quoting Agustino
So what? You don't have that anyway.
Quoting Agustino
This is just babble. Without the state, you are nothing. Go live in the woods and see how rich you get there.
Quoting Agustino
I have a feeling you're more interested in being rich than helping the poor. If you want to help the poor, don't vote for someone who wants to take their benefits away and give them to the rich in tax cuts.
Nope, not 35.5% will see their taxes go up. Only 6.8% will see their taxes go up:
Quoting Baden
I don't need the state, I need a community of people.
Quoting Baden
I've further clarified:
Quoting Agustino
Don't call the police next time you get robbed then. Stop using public roads and boycott the fire brigade. Get out there and protest against public transport, libraries and schools. Good luck with that.
I disagree that those services you mention require the kind of overly controlling, big bureacratic state we have today.
Quoting Baden
Furthermore, it's not at all clear that Trump will take away benefits, and especially not in order to give them to the rich via tax cuts. Trump is lowering budget overall in most categories. I would disagree with how much he is defunding the Environmental Protection Agency, but apart from that it looks good. He is removing some old programs that took in a lot of money, and some of them had little positive effects, and introducing new ones which are cheaper, and will hopefully have better long term effects. It's hard to judge. If it was after me, the government shouldn't be doing a lot of this stuff anyway. It should all be at local levels.
Silly meme >> evasive dodge >> :-d
I think you are actually more thoughtful than this and your position is probably more nuanced, but Trump's isn't. He doesn't give a flying about the poor or their problems because he can't relate to them. Don't jump on his depraved bandwagon.
In fact, I did call the police one time when I got my place attacked in the UK and guess what - they came in 2 days, and ended up doing almost nothing, just saying how sorry they were... I think the state bureaucracy is actually really bad and crippling many of these services. For example, I remember healthcare used to be quite horrible in the UK (massive waiting times) - although it was free.
Quoting Baden
Well okay, but you seem to be jumping to these conclusions based on what you personally think about Trump's character, and I don't think that's very useful when judging his tax policy for example.
No, I base these conclusions on the actual budget. The 1.74 trillion cut in anti-poverty programs in particular. I actually didn't think Trump would be this bad as during his campaign he seemed to be the one promising to keep the safety net in place. Then again, he wanted the votes of poor white folks. Now, he's got them, he's reverted to doling out presents to people like him. But, yes, I don't like his character either for obvious reasons.
Con: emotionally petty and politically uninformed
Pro: holds up a mirror to the retardation of American politics
Con: holds up a mirror to the retardation of American politics
I got this as wrong as anybody else. I really liked Sanders' policies but wanted Clinton to get the nomination because I thought Sanders was unelectable. Now I've come to the opinion that Sanders would probably have beaten Trump (although as a philosopher that statement makes me blush, as I know that counterfactuals like that are meaningless).
If we can get through the rest of the term without him managing to do too much permanent damage then I think there's a serious possibility that we may see the election of a genuine champion of the working class (rather than this current pretend one) in 2020. And then, maybe, the working poor of the US will be able to start to claw their way out of the misery they've been subjected to for the last couple of decades.
I was hoping the political pendulum would swing pretty hard to the left after Trump, but his base cannot be persuaded that big government isn't always a bad thing.
Agustino, this is the type of mindbogglingly moronic political philosophy that I'd expect from a freshman high school student who is just started read Atlas Shrugged. You've participated in philosophy forums for what? Four years now give or take? You have absolutely nothing to show for it.
Quoting Agustino
Cutting 31% of the Environmental Protection Agency helps which state program for the disadvantaged?
You understand, don't you, that cutting 100% of the EPA and adding 10% to the Defense budget doesn't even remotely balance out--$18 billion (+/-) budget for EPA, $600 billion (+/-) for defense? Which state benefits from the 29% cut in the $37 billion State Department Budget?
The problem with budget cuts, is that much of the budget are mandatory expenses, like interest on the debt and entitlement programs such as Social Security. If we don't cut the military budget, then the cuts come out of programs that provide long term benefits to the population as a whole. The military budget especially benefits communities with bases near by, and the complex of manufacturers that make up the other half of the "military industrial complex" that President Eisenhower warned about in 1960.
Trump has only been in office 8 months; give him time. With any luck, he'll take the Republicans down with him.
It should be apparent that people need the government as a vehicle to execute their desires to care for one another. Government is a critical institution in the complex business of a society as a whole caring for itself. State, county, and municipal governments carry much of the load and the cost is largely locally raised. But only the Federal Government is in a position to capture revenue across the wide horizon of the economy, and funnel it back to the states.
I have no problem with "the government" providing Medicare and Social Security, for example. What's your problem with it?
At least they said they were sorry, instead of finding something to charge you for.
It does. Building a rapid transit line (not a whole system) is likely to cost 1 or 2 billion dollars--a level of expense that counties and cities can not usually come up with. Generally the federal government funds at least half of such necessary infrastructure costs. where does the money come from? It comes from states that generate more income in federal taxes than they receive back. So, if Minnesota gets a billion bucks from those evil feds, well... it was sent to Washington from us in the first place
Now, if you live in the really anti-government states, like much of the south, you are a net dependent on the federal government. Those federal government hating states get more from the Feds than they send to Washington.
You can't do anything about a fanatic base who view the government as an evil entity that needs to be drained.
That's to be expected, the ones who hate the government the most are going to give the least and take the most.
As Will Rogers said: “The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.”
Now, during WWII, the highest tax rate on the wealth was 94%. Admirable, but it didn't last.
For the 30 years of the post war boom, the tax rate on wealthy individuals never fell below 70%.
In the 1980s (the country led by the rotting brain of Ronald Reagan) the tax rate was around 50%. Then they cut the top rate to 28%. After 3 years of that, the tax system was in bad shape. After that, the rate went up to 39%
In this century it was at 39%, 35%, 43%, and 39%.
Swamps get drained, evil entities get exorcized. I don't think there are any priests up to the task, these days.
But there is something that can be done: Just wait for the logic of Trump's policies to totally screw the working and unemployed lumpen proles to the point where they finally see the light.
And they will.
Eventually.
We hope.
Let us pray.
My impression from afar is that Trump supporters have very little overlap with small-Government Republicans. The biggest economic desire of Trump supporters appears to be erection of a tariff wall to protect US manufacturing, which is about as Big Government as one can get.
The same neoliberal policies have been pushed for a while already, with negative effects on the middle class and poor, much to the benefit of the rich.
It's a matter of ignorance and also willful ignorance to think that more of the same would work; but, hey, here we are still trying to get trickle down to work.
I thought believing in small government was a sine qua non nowadays to being a Republican.
There's a separate discussion about whether the Republican establishment itself is even pro small government, given their enthusiasm for enormous spending on the military and on prosecuting and incarcerating people involved in victimless crimes like drug use. But, interesting as that subject is, it's not about Trump.
Why are they meaningless? I fully understand the concept of Bernie Sanders being elected, just like I fully understand the idea of alternate history when watching The Man in The High Castle.
That may be true during the nomination phase; but, when the cards are down most Republicans will fall in line with whoever is the candidate, either a democrat or republican with the obvious choice being a Republican for Republicans.
I'd say that Hillary was just an awful candidate and have to agree with the fact that the nomination was stolen from Sanders. If my memory serves correctly, I think Sanders had a lead over Trump in most polls I saw. Even if Sanders is a social democrat, although he emphasizes the socialist part, was the President, he would have been certainly a more rational and cool headed one.
(Y)
I think the one positive thing he managed to do was to make oft-maligned working class white Republican voters aware of the fact that the 'establishment' wing of the party did/does not represent their economic interests. The consciousness of this fact will be important moving forward, I think, and if Democrats can craft an inclusive economic message--i.e. not one primarily focused on an exclusionary friend/enemy form of identity politics--then this demographic may be ripe for the taking next time around.
The perception of this group is obviously extremely negative at the moment, and perhaps rightly so, but I also feel that the racism, xenophobia, etc. has been a bit exaggerated. I'd also even suggest that it's at least partly a reaction to the Left's continued fixation on identity politics; they can hardly contain their glee at the thought of the coming demographic shift in the US which is going to make POC the dominant voice in politics.
That's not meant to suggest that lingering racism isn't something we as a nation need to sincerely address, but only that it should be done more tactfully than is being done at present--preferably through opening up constructive mutual dialogue and without demonizing a particular group.
Too many cons to list.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/opinion/rich-getting-richer-taxes.html?referer
Read this today. Shocked about Mitt Romney's father being so high-minded when it came to business affairs. We could definitely use much more of that sort of perspective right now, that voluntary desire to think beyond one's own narrow financial self-interest and towards the greater common good. Being a social conservative, I'd imagine you'd find that 'virtuous' approach to social, political and economic relations congenial just as I do.
The dogmatic and unrealistic approach to liberal progressiveness by politicians all over the world, the media and many others (at the expense of many ordinary people) completely undermined the good work that has been done over the past decades.
And the liberal response to the inevitable backlash? Yet more, and more vicious, liberal arrogance. Genius.
We are gradually undoing all the progress the liberal project has made and it's much more the fault of the left than the right.
As for Trump, at least he is something different. After 30 years of carbon copy, PR savvy clones we need change. We also need a shock to the system to realize where we've being going wrong. My hope is Trump will be followed by a much more sensible centrist politician who will focus on rational and sensible progressiveness.
Oh so just comparing EPA to defense increase, is that a fair comparison? :s Defence isn't even the biggest source of budget spending:
Of course you need to cut inefficient spending on Medicare, Health & Unemployment/Labour - that's more than half the budget!
Quoting Bitter Crank
Many of those programs that you say are necessary are being run inefficiently and ought to be replaced by less costly and more beneficial alternatives, don't you think so? The point in running an economy well is to get the most value for the least cost. That is the primary purpose that everyone should be aiming for.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Not much of a problem, except that ideally we have to be moving continuously towards a society that relies less on such government programs. Medicare is a way to give the large insurance companies a way to do business with the state and make loads of money - because we all know it's easiest to make money when you do business with the dumb state. Just ask Trump's father, that's how he made his money. To close such loopholes we have to diminish the power of the state. Medicare isn't even necessary as far as I'm concerned. People should be taxed less, and get to decide more what to do with that income instead of paying it by force to insurance companies and the like. Maybe I don't want to pay payroll taxes to fund some insurance. Maybe I don't want to pay to fund Social Security pensions - maybe I wanna save that additional income myself.
Quoting Bitter Crank
We were not talking about such programs now, so this is a red herring.
Quoting Bitter Crank
He's right! >:O
Quoting Bitter Crank
That was way too much. It basically meant that if I'm a rich person the government chooses what to do with my money. That's wrong. Those politicians watching porn in Congress shouldn't tell me what to do with my money.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I think taxes should never be that high in the first place. What, is the country at war that it needs such taxes implemented or what? If the state is so good, why don't they start government businesses and compete in the market to generate money for state projects that they need? Oh, I forgot, they can't do that unless they have the law on their side...
I would agree with such high taxes (80%+) out of non-productive endeavours such as income from financial speculation. If it was after me I'd tax all of Wall Street like that. But businesses and regular people - including millionaires - no need for it. Banks on the other hand, insurance companies - those folks who earn money by doing almost nothing and gaming the system - I wouldn't mind taxing them.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I don't think this will happen. What "screws" the working and unemployed is a bad economy. They'll always be screwed in a bad economy - it's just what it is. And as Posty McPostface would tell you, it is what it is.
>:O >:O I tell you, with these services you should sometimes be happy that at least they haven't harmed you!
I've read that, and I don't agree with it. I see nothing wrong with making a lot of money in and of itself. It depends what the person does with that money. But I don't think the state should force them to surrender that money so that greedy and stupid politicians can redistribute it to "the people", meaning in truth to things like banks, insurance companies, Wall Street, military companies, and the like.
I much agree with Tolkien's political views. The government is to a great degree an unnecessary evil.
Well I'm not the only one on philosophy forums with similar views. And no, I'm not a Randian, thanks for the red herring though.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your position. Think about it from a different angle: if "the people" are not represented by the current government (one of Trump's claims)--by the (Deep) State--but government has instead been infiltrated by those already possessed of large amounts of wealth, then these can buy off politicians and bend policy to their will, getting even richer, more powerful, and thus more politically-influential in the process. This is a problem whose only remedy is more rather than less democracy.
So politicians no longer represent the will of "the people", they represent the banks, insurance companies, Wall Street, military companies, etc. who then use the levers of government to their advantage. They're obviously not going to tax themselves at a higher rate but are instead going to place that burden on the middle and lower classes. You think that's fair? Is this a straw man? I do want to understand your views on the topic.
I also think it's a bit of an exaggeration to juxtapose poor people and rich people as you seem to be doing. Most of the rich people I know have been the beneficiaries of significant advantages and most definitely not self-made. On the other hand, I know a lot of people who are either poor or of extremely modest means who work their assess off to simply survive. And contrary to stereotypes (perpetuated by the often undeserving and idle rich no doubt) they're not always stupid or totally lacking in self-restraint.
I'm all for rewarding hard work and talent to a certain extent, but this simplistic economic narrative-- which rationalizes greed and selfishness--is, in my estimation, largely BS. You can obviously point to examples which support this Randian position, but there are too many counter-examples these days to make it compelling.
Finally, I'm not familiar with Tolkien's political views, but if that's how he felt then I'd have to disagree with him. What alternative view of social organization did he recommend? What historical examples did he draw from as showing themselves superior to some form of government?
Well, we live in democracies, so the government we have is the government we've elected. If you don't like it then vote for an anarchist who promises to strip the government away.
No, the remedy is very simple. Get rid of the power of government, then the rich cannot become more politically influential in the first place. Power is the problem, not the solution.
Quoting Erik
Yes, politicians will never represent the will of the people. It's in the nature of power to be corrupt.
Government is like the One Ring in LOTR. The good guys in LOTR don't want to use the One Ring (power) to destroy Sauron (the evil guy) - they fear that they too will turn into the bad guys. Rather they want to destroy the source of power itself - the ring.
Quoting Erik
Yeah I know a few of those too. But most of them got rich because of business with the government - which again is the easy money. If you're corrupt and have a little bit of intelligence (and are willing to do what it takes), it doesn't seem like it's that hard to get rich.
Quoting Erik
Yes, that is true. Poor people who are honest but naive - or perhaps naive is not the right word but rather don't have their own initiative and rather just go with the flow, relying on the work / jobs others provide them, can end up working very hard for very little reward. That's very unfortunate, but I think this can be only cured by more education... It's very difficult to say, because for some people it's in their nature to not take much initiative themselves...
The Family Guy episode Tea Peter has something like this. The town government gets shutdown, things turn bad when it becomes a free-for-all, and soon they realize that they need to cooperate, establish a system of rules that they need to live by, and end up bringing the government back.
And if you can't trust Family Guy to get your political wisdom, then what can you trust?
That's how governments happen. A small community works together, with a select few being chosen as the leaders ('cause people will always disagree on something, and so there has to be arbiters). The community grows, eventually merges with nearby communities and their leadership, and so on. A few thousand years later and you have a country and a government.
I don't think you've really thought your own idea through. It's idealistic and impractical.
If you get rid of government then you'll likely have anarchy (by definition obviously). That may not be good for anyone, rich or poor.
I'm beginning to incline towards Hegel's overall positive view of the state, at least in theory, which runs counter to the 'necessary evil' (not to mention unnecessary evil) narrative: genuine freedom (as contrasted with license and a lack of self-restraint) is only found within the state and under the rule of law, in which the individual freely places himself or herself under the universal.
Now of course the modern coercive state, dominated by large corporate interests, is a perversion of this more 'natural' political association. But the goal shouldn't be to rid ourselves of government entirely, but rather to make it conform to those authentically democratic principles which it currently works against.
We did and the converse is still true; the majority of the rich get a tax break and that break is significantly bigger than that for poorer people while the rich need it the least. The 380 USD increase for poor people is comparatively tougher on them as they are already on a tight budget.
In addition, poorer people use more of the programs that are being cut to fund these tax cuts so they are confronted with increased spending to make up for the disappearance of those programs as well and those 100 USD for the 64.5% will not offset that in the least.
In short, poor people are shafted even if their income taxes might be lower as they lose access to several programs, while rich people by and large will get richer. Compared to a poor person who gets 100 USD every rich person gets 200 times as much without working any harder. I don't see the fairness in this.
I'm sure the word "solidarity" isn't really in the average US citizens' vocabulary but we tax richer people at higher rates because they can carry the burden. These tax breaks and defunding of projects is hurting poor people and it's not doing much for rich people (anything earned above 75,000 USD has very little effect on happiness). Meanwhile, I'm not sure what defunding EPA is supposed to accomplish. In the short term I suppose it could fuel some growth due to lax regulations but in the long run you're going to have to clean up the mess you make. It's only so much pollution the environment can absorb before we suffer the consequences. It's all very clear there's no concern about the future and future generations.
It's not a given its inefficient. Healthy people are productive people.
I think anarchy works in small communities. Larger communities will need a very small state, preferably a non-democratic one - ie constitutional monarchy.
Quoting Benkei
I agree on this point, I think too much money was taken out of the EPA. I'm leaning much more towards environmental friendliness than most Republican voters though. I'm not certain on the negative effects that are predicted for global warming (I think those are likely exaggerated because of the extreme complexity and sensitivity of our climate), but I think we should nevertheless be careful, since if temperature does rise as much as predicted, that will be quite bad.
Quoting Benkei
I agree that this is very high as I said. However, it only applies to 6.8% of the bottom 20%, and I said that I would hope this would be balanced out by higher economic growth rate & increase in wages.
Quoting Benkei
Is the budget being cut just to fund the tax breaks? I'd say that the budget should have been cut anyway since it was growing too large. The US government is becoming a huge behemoth.
Quoting Benkei
That is true, but relative to their income I suppose they'd be about the same. A poor person currently manages with say $1300/month. So a growth of $100 in that $1300 would be appreciated, it might just make the difference between being capable to afford enough for monthly expenses.
Now a rich person would probably not appreciate a growth of 20K that much, because well - what is 20K when you make 200K? Probably affords another vacation, or something of that nature. I agree that the rich don't "need it" as much, but that isn't to say that it should forcefully be taken from them. Again, I think the rich have a duty to give back to society, and they should decide how to do this themselves.
Quoting Benkei
Right, but here's the point. Just because the rich can carry the burden without starving doesn't mean they should be taxed more. Government should aim to extract the least amount possible in taxes and be efficient. The reason why our governments tax so much is because they're incredibly corrupt and wasteful. Most big business and quick money is made in governmnet deals, because the government leaves a lot on the table and doesn't care. Instead, when they need more, they just raise taxes. They have very little incentive to be efficient.
Not to mention that most creative, innovative, smart, etc. people don't end up in government usually. It's the fools who end up there most often, the most corrupt, those who cannot do something else, and so on so forth.
Quoting Benkei
I agree, but are current programs the most cost-effective way to get people healthy? I agree that health is absolutely necessary, but we have to determine the most efficient way to provide it. We shouldn't just squander money because it goes to health.
I find it not only morally suspect, but also not always true from a more practical standpoint. The best (and most financially successful) companies that I've worked for, for instance, cared about their employees (and customers, vendors, etc.) and treated them very well. Morale was high, productivity was good, customer satisfaction was through the roof, etc. That's a solid business model that unfortunately seems a bit old-school within our current, short-term and money-obsessed consumer culture.
Anyhow I appreciate your posts but this excessive cynicism is not at all more 'realistic' than other positions. I know I'm probably misrepresenting your views a bit but this is the impression they've left on me. You create these stark contrasts then privilege one side as being superior without considering more nuanced and moderate alternatives. Again that's just my (probably mistaken) impression and I do respect you as a thinker.
But it seems to me that most people who go into government seem to be the worst kind of individuals in the first place - privileged, went to the very best schools, didn't do much in their lives, can't really do much, aren't creative, aren't very knowledgeable about science and philosophy (just check that super small science budget...), like to rule over others just to feel powerful, and so on so forth. Governments aren't meritocratic generally, quite the opposite. They're the rule of a select few who aren't very good at doing anything else - so they go become a politician...
Likewise, it's yearly sums. And the forceful taking... of course it's enforced but there's good reason for him to pay taxes; he uses a lot of government funded assets and services. As a community we tend to agree that those worse off should be helped and government is much more effective at helping the community (it's supposed to serve) than a multitude of charitable organisations with narrow themes may manage. Additionaly, a government can be held accountable and can be influenced by those actually receiving benefits - instead of things being dictated by the person giving money.
So by and large, it's much more likely to have just and fair results. Of course inefficiencies arise due to all sorts of processes.
Finally, I'll note that a lot of research on inequality shows that it's unhealthy for a community to have too large discrepancies between its members. There's also plenty of literature on how GPD growth results in wealth increase for a limited number of people. It's not apparent to me why CEOs nowadays should earn 271 times as much as the least paid employee, especially when put in a historical perspective. See for instance:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-inequality.html?_
I'd probably care a lot less about how these tax brackets were made up if the starting point of income inequality is not already this large. I mean, people talk about the entitlement generation when it's people looking up to the government for benefits but if I look at salary expectations of CEOs nowadays I think we've got it backwards.
I agree we should preferably go about it as efficient as possible. I'll also note that sometimes principles cost money. How about accessibility for all, for instance? From an insurance perspective not very efficient... but then should a person with a prior condition be left out to dry?
Ah yes, my bad. No idea why I made that confusion. Yes, I would agree that that is too little as an increase on average for the bottom 20%. The other income brackets though, until the richest 20% at least seem reasonable.
Quoting Benkei
That's all nice in theory, however the problem of course is that big government = big corruption. I think big government is part and parcel of the rich getting richer more easily.
Quoting Benkei
I would agree. Especially CEOs of multinational corporations, they definitely earn too much for what they do. BUT - I wouldn't agree that entrepreneurs who assume the risk of starting the business earn too much for their efforts generally.
Quoting Benkei
Well it is to a large degree entitlement generation because people just expect to be given, and a lot of the mentality around the world is built around it. The mantra goes like go to college, get a degree, get a good job. That is an entitlement mindset, and I think it's very destructive. Even the CEO just happens to be the lucky product of the entitlement mindset more often than not. And it's very common, even amongst the poorer people, who still aspire to that. Many people with college degrees can't get a job that easily though, because colleges have become quite bad frankly in terms of the real value of the education they offer. People who finish college these days generally talk about "entering the real world" :s - I mean what were they doing for 20+ years before? Living in dream land?
Quoting Benkei
No, I don't think they should be left out.
You know, I've noticed something vaguely analogous in big business. Monetary resources go up and down, left and right, and can depend on who-knows-what. North Korea testing nukes and missiles is just one example, with an odd ripple effects. When monetary resources go down, some managers tend to leave (you know, the grass always seem greener on the other side), and people on the floor are let go with no backfills, etc. However, when that happens, the work load does not change (at least not proportionally), meaning that existing employees suddenly have more to do. Eventually some things may get dropped as a result, with lots of resistance, complaints, all that. :)
An analogy in society could be cutting down resources for police, or any supporting public/governmental areas, or something subsequently requiring more police resources. Tax cuts tend to mean something gets dropped, and it may not be readily clear what implications there are. Personally, I pay for civilization with taxes (to paraphrase someone I don't recall), and I certainly don't mind doing so. Do we need 3 cars? No, we have 1, and public transportation is fine. In the US it seems an election could be won by promising tax cuts, and meanwhile there are plenty kids on street living in poverty. That's kids for crying out loud. Kids that could end up taking up police resources for that matter. It's ridiculous.
I don't think it's a secret that cooperation, a civilized society, can accomplish a lot more than some scattered (para-anarchistic?) locals. No, government isn't some abstract "evil entity" "over there"; it's a serving body of it's society.
Sure, I have no doubt about that. However, I don't think that Trump's budget is the equivalent of inviting them to piss down that body's neck. We'll see how things evolve, but I think your fears are exaggerated.
Lol, will do. (Y)
Just to be clear, you are saying that you agree with a tax rate of 80% or higher on non-productive stuff like financial speculation? Well, as the French economists Piketty shows, that's precisely where a good share of the rich folks are making their money -- financial speculation, currency manipulation, and so on.
Yes.
So, Trump casinos, pro or con?
The state sets up the terms of capitalist operations--registering corporate entities, managing competition, building or facilitating infrastructure (ports, canals, railroads, highways, airports, etc.), protecting the national and international interests, and controlling popular resistance to capitalist exploitation (through brutality or benefit programs).
The military budget was legitimately astronomical during WWII, when the entire economy was oriented toward war production. (Capital did not operate as non-profit patriots, by the way, while making bombs, planes, tanks, and bullets.) It took the US from 1945 to the mid-1960s to pay off the WWII debt. By the late 1950s, it had become apparent that the military and capital, who had enjoyed their wartime romance, planned on a long-term relationship. President (and former Allied Commander) Eisenhower understood this, and in a speech at the end of his presidency, warned the country about the burgeoning "Military-Industrial Complex"
He understood that the Military-Industrial Complex would want to continue the relationship of military buying and corporate production, whether it was needed or not. We have seen 70 years of post-WWII military spending that was largely useless. Take nuclear/thermonuclear bomb production: Over the course of its operation, the nuclear contractors received orders for, and built, something like 18,000 nuclear/thermonuclear bombs. This was a huge operation, of course, very profitable. But to what end? 18,000 nuclear bombs grossly exceeds any reasonable estimation of how many bombs it would take to wreck the Soviet Union and China both.
How many billions of dollars went into the research and development of advanced fighters that turned out to not work very well (too complicated, too unwieldy, big but not robust, etc.) How many billions were spent on the aborted Star Wars Initiative which was supposed to produce death rays, laser substitutes for missile interceptors, and satellite killers? (Estimated to be about a trillion dollars). How many billions were spent on Iraq and Afghanistan? Roughly a trillion dollars each?
You no doubt heard about military orders for ordinary items (toilet seats, screw drivers, etc.) where the unit cost was priced, like, $700? Were the military procurement officers stupid? Were the supply-side corporations hoodwinking the buyers? No. It was just a cozy relationship where grossly maximized profits at government expense was de rigueur.
By comparison, social security is an extremely efficient operation, with a very low overhead. (By the way, Social Security wouldn't be in financial difficulties if earlier administrations had not raided the Social Security Trust Fund to balance the Federal Budget.) Medicare and Medicaid of course interact with the medical industry, but both have well established price ceilings. Medicare has had fixed rates of reimbursement since the late 1970s (not the same rates, of course, but fixed, none the less). Practitioners who can afford it don't take Medicare or Medicaid patients, because of those fixed rates.
All government expenditures, whether for hydrogen bomb parts or for school buildings, end up back in the economy somewhere, but much of it ends up in the top 5% owing to their ownership and profit taking in government contracts. Social Security and welfare programs, by contrast, plow funds into the rank and file which purchase food, clothing and shelter -- benefitting far more individuals (and small businesses) than military-oriented plants do.
Of course you are pro-rich. It would be absurd for you to want to become rich if you were not pro-rich.
Tell us, what is the outstanding work you do that benefits a lot of other people so positively that you should be entitled to riches? >:)
You were being polite. More like down our throats.
I do want to be rich, I think I'd be a good administrator of the money to tell you the truth. But that doesn't mean I'm pro-rich as a social class. I'm pro-rich in the sense that people should have the opportunity to be rich and be economically powerful if they earn it fairly.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Well, currently my work is in web development / marketing services (for the web). I'm not a rich guy. I don't have the scale necessary to impact a lot of people positively, and it's quite competitive. I will probably switch to something different over time, that can hopefully scale up faster and reach more people. Probably still something online, but I wouldn't exclude going back to something civil engineery :P
It depends what you mean by capitalist. Does someone like me count as a capitalist? I think entrepreneurship is vital for the economy, perhaps the most important factor. I don't think you can have a healthy economy without entrepreneurs and inventors. I don't think these people are the bourgeoisie. Nor are they the proletariat for that matter. They're a different class altogether. The bourgeoisie is the middle-upper class - those who enjoy high social status. There's a lot of them. The proletariat are common working people - typically don't enjoy high social status. Entrepreneurs are typically inventors and people who want to do something and build something. They also generally have low social status, at least until they're successful, if they are.
The state is definitely not a committe for organizing MY affairs. Quite the contrary, the state is a great problem, I'm very little helped by it.
I agree with the rest of your post by and large. But the problem there isn't the military industrial complex - it's the state - without the state, there would be no military industrial complex and no corruption in the first place. You yourself recognize the extreme level of corruption of the state. Such as accepting $700 toilets. And so on so forth. The state is the problem BC, not the solution.
I look at Tolkien's Shire admiringly.
But that's very impractical. So we should settle for Constitutional Monarchy. The monarch has no interest to affiliate himself with the military industrial complex. He doesn't need money, he already has and is guaranteed to have all the money in the world. His whole concern is to take care of his great wealth, which is the whole country. When you own the asset you don't just exploit it for the short term. Whereas if the asset is only temporarily given to you, you'll do everything to exploit it as much as possible so you would have maximised your gain by the time you have to give it back.
Personally? Probably against, because I don't think gambling is a good thing. But we shouldn't legislate morality.
Curious, could you elaborate what you mean by that?
Meaning that just because an activity is immoral is not a sufficient condition to have a law against it. Other conditions need to be met as well.
And these other conditions are unrelated to morality?
Not totally unrelated to morality. But for example, gluttony is a vice/sin, and yet we don't outlaw gluttony. So the fact it is a vice/sin isn't sufficient to make something worthy of being outlawed. Why not? Because without freedom, there cannot be any virtue in the first place.
Sure. So the fact it is a vice/sin (immoral) isn't a sufficient ground for us to outlaw it. So how do we choose what we outlaw and what we don't? We'll clearly outlaw some immoral stuff, but not all. What makes the difference?
Go Reds - Smash State.
LOL - I was being quite serious. You yourself mentioned how corrupt the state is - and that a lot of money is made in making business with the state.
Good! Most excellent!
Trying a different angle, how would one legislate morality?
By making every immoral act illegal.
The variety of socialism that I follow holds that the state is, indeed, a problem, along with the bourgeoisie (which for Marx meant large capitalists). Most entrepreneurs are "petite bourgeoisie" -- small fry in the business world -- making a try for their "original accumulation". Shop keepers, web developers, etc.
The revolution consists of liquidating the wealth of the bourgeoisie (not the persons who are bourgeoisie) and dismantling the state. In it's place? A decentralized system of coordinated production and distribution under the management of workers managing their production facility. Citizens, in their roles of consumers and producers would, together, establish markets.
This revolution would be preceded by a probably lengthy period of social and intellectual change among the 90% of the population which has no share in the wealth of the 10%. When the organization of the working class reaches a sufficient level, and they have gained sufficient leverage, then the plug can be pulled on the current system.
No one has worked out the details of how this would come about. It is neither feasible nor proper to prescribe the steps. (This American version of Marxism was developed in the late 19th, early 20th century by groups like the IWW, Socialist Labor Party, New Union Movement, et al.) Workers have to organize themselves and establish themselves how to conduct the transition.
Quoting Agustino
So am I. Point is, Go Reds, Smash State, Crush the Bourgeois Class!
My guess is that you know this already, but it is Uncle Karl.
Who said they looked forward to the last monarch being strangled with the intestines of the last priest?
Does this decentralized system involve any bureaucratic state apparatus which would dictate who produces what and in what quantities? I think that would be a big problem actually, not ideal. My economics is more distributist. Private property is extremely important, and not only it shouldn't be abolished, but the aim of our economy should make private property more accessible to everyone, and prevent the "state" or other entites from blocking people from having access to economic liberty - which is private property.
Quoting Bitter Crank
What makes you call most entrepreneurs "petite boureoisie"? And why do you identify the bourgeoisie with the super rich? I think middle-upper class lawyers for example are more bourgeois than Steve Jobs was for example.
Diderot!
So your statement makes more sense to me with a slight revision...
No, morality is objective.
No. However, 'no state' presents a problem if a need for external defense or recovery from a cataclysmic event was necessary. Some kind of responsive structure would be needed for such purposes.
Quoting Agustino
If you are defining "private property" as clothing, a dog, a house... that's called personal property. For most people, personal property is, indeed, important because it has to do directly with their existence. "Private property" meaning railroads, factories, warehouses, stores, etc. is anathema in a socialist economy because that kind of private property is the substance of the exploitative system of capitalism.
Quoting Agustino
Because that is the way Marx referenced the class of people who are capitalists. Most people do not have a clue about how to use "class" properly.
Working class means "people who are dependent on a wage or a salary for their sustenance. Most people in any economy are "workers" -- wage earners.
Middle class properly refers to the "Petite bourgeoisie" - owners of a small factory, a store, land-owning operator farmers, professionals with private practices (lawyers, doctors, architects -- IF they are in fact private practices). Lawyers who work for Thompson Reuters Legal Reference Systems are just highly educated workers. College professors, tenured or not, are employees of universities and are not middle class.
"Bourgeoisie" refers to the wealthiest class. The bourgeoisie own large businesses (thousands of employees, millions of dollars in profit--not just revenue) or large shares in very large businesses like DuPont, Bayer, Hilton Hotels, Target, Walmart, 3M, Apple, Maersk, Exxon, etc. The Bourgeoisie are sometimes very large landowners, or in urban settings, rentiers (apartment buildings, office buildings). Bourgeoisie also hold large amounts of securities, cash, person property, etc.
In Marx's time there was still a significant class of royalty (emperors, kings, czars, princes, etc.) who were sometimes economically significant. Like the Hapsburgs or Romanovs. Except maybe for the Windsors, (QEII and some of her disreputable off spring), most of this class has been extinguished.
If you feel shabby because you fall into the class of either worker or petite bourgeoisie, please remember it's not personal. Marx wasn't thinking of you at the time.
What about "the middle class" that everybody wants to be part of? It's a highly nebulous term. It may mean that someone lives in a nice apartment, earns a good wage, has a bachelors degree, has a large TV, a good sound system, an up-market car. It may be someone who owns their own business, has 75 employees, and is retiring early. It may be someone who lives in a shabby room, reads a lot of literary books, aspires to high culture, but is basically a welfare dependent. Donald Trump could claim to be "middle class". Bill Gates could call himself middle class. It's a meaningless term. For the most part, "middle class" is a term of positive self appraisal, and doesn't have anything to do with class structure.
Okay. What do you think about distributism then? I'm trying to gauge how your position is different from mine.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Okay so what if I am a mechanic and I have my own tools and garage where I fix cars? Does that count as personal or private property? What if I design my own car and then start getting some factories to build it - do I get to keep rights to my invention? What if I go to India and bring good Cashmere Indian quality from there which I sell in a shop I setup? Do I get to own the store?
Quoting Bitter Crank
I would disagree with some of those being "private property". Railroads and such are public property.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I don't think entrepreneurship can only exist in capitalism. Do you? I think many more people would be entrepreneurs under distributism for example.
Actually, you yourself have argued to me that morality is objective before, so I don't see why you're going back on it now. You sent me the Sam Harris video which argued that there are moral FACTS in the world, that are just as much facts as the facts studied by physics. So what happened? Did you change your mind or are you choosing what your position will be depending on what you want to argue against?
Why should being rich equate with (economic) power? Bigger corporations use that power to externalise costs to smaller suppliers or customers which is an expression of economic power but has nothing to do with a fair and equitable distributions of risks and profits.
I consider it natural that a bright and successful person has influence due to the fact that he's bright and seems to know what he's doing business wise. I'm not sure whether that should automatically translate to influence in fields where his knowledge and expertise are not a given. In a society where the "economic reality" trumps reality, economic power is too much to be awarded for the simple status of being rich (which, btw, more often than not is a matter of luck).
Well what would economic power equate with then? Economic power means the power to decide how capital is allocated and to what uses it is allocated. If I have economic power, I decide if we're going to start making trains, or we're going to produce toys. I decide if we're going to build a hospital, or a school. I decide if a restaurant employing homeless people gets opened. And so on so forth. A lot of these activities require money to finance themselves before they can start pulling income to be self-sustaining. Without economic power, they are impossible to achieve.
If I had $1 million for example, I wouldn't mind risking even 100K to get such a business off the ground. Like a restaurant employing the homeless, or a school for the disadvantaged that had a different business model, and so on so forth. But as a middle class person, who lacks the capital, I lack the courage to take such actions, because if they don't work out, I could be put in a perilous situation.
Quoting Benkei
Being bright and successful isn't sufficient to make you influential. For example, I think I am not that stupid of a person, but I generally don't have the patience to cultivate the long-term relationships and make the necessary compromises that are often required to be influential quickly. Influence is much more a factor of having the right connections - OR - having a lot of capital (economic power). That's why many people who enter politics end up corrupt for example, even if they start out honest. Gaining the right connections often requires compromise.
Quoting Benkei
In terms of massive wealth (let's say $50 million+) you're quite correct, I would agree. But I think wealth in terms of $1-5 million is achievable by pretty much anyone who wants it and who works long enough on it assuming they are healthy and a circumstance like war and the like doesn't interfere with their wealth building.
Whose capital? Surely only your own? But we see economic power expands itself and coerces other actors to accept the burden of costs that should reasonably not be borne by them.
Take for example Exxon Mobil's standard terms and conditions for contractors who supply and administer additives to increase the yield of oil fields. If the contractor discovers a better compound or a better method that increases the yield, the IP to that is owned by Exxon Mobil. If you don't accept the general terms and conditions, they'll go to another contractor. Not exactly fair or reasonable since its the contractors work and knowledge that is leveraged to develop the new compound or method but if you have sufficient economic power, fair and reasonable don't play a role any more.
Quoting Agustino
I suppose my choice of words that it's "natural" was bad. I mean to say that I would consider it far more appropriate that a bright and successful person has influence in his area of expertise because of his being bright and successful than because of the money he has (or the connections he might have). On a personal level, where money doesn't matter, this is precisely how it works: if I have a question about houses I ask my friend who's an architect not the one that's a DJ (not even if he was David Guetta). Money has become the measure for all things but it's a bad one for most things that matter.
Yes, exactly. The point is that if the capital is not your own - and it is the bank's, etc. etc. - then you don't really get to do what you want with it, and hence it's not a form of economic power. That's why being rich - as opposed to merely being able to influence how capital is allocated - is part of economic power in my view.
Quoting Benkei
This is a different point, but yes, I agree that the costs should be borne by you, and not by others, especially if they haven't risked anything in the first place (for example if they haven't financed your project).
Quoting Benkei
Ahh yes, I see what you mean. Yes I've come across similar practices quite frequently, and I think they should be illegal. Pretty much anyone who controls a distribution channel of some sort tends to set such unfair conditions. Supermarkets do it very frequently. If you don't like their conditions, take your product elsewhere. But of course, they already have the infrastructure set up, and it's very expensive to set it up yourself (not to mention it would take very long), so you're pretty much stuck with having to accept their terms if you want to get your product to market. It's a hard situation to fix - I'm not sure if merely implementing a law against it would be sufficient. Such practices can be masked in different, not so obvious, ways.
Quoting Benkei
Yes, I agree with you.
Quoting Benkei
Indeed, this is another side of it as well. Money confers social status, the way other expertise quite frequently doesn't, and I think that's wrong too.
Harris is no different to utilitarianism. He would have nothing but utter contempt for your Orthodox faith, he thinks it is a brain-destroying delusion. Choose your allies carefully.
:s
Harris is not my ally. I just agree with him that there are moral facts. Most religious people agree as well. I don't see what's the problem with it. If he's wrong about one thing, it doesn't mean that he can't be right about others.
Okay, so what does that have to do with my agreement with him over the existence of moral facts? If he hates Christianity he's wrong about moral facts because he hates Christianity?
I don't know a great deal about 'distributism'. There are some aspects of it that are interesting and attractive. How do we get there? Dorothy Day and Peter Marin who founded the Catholic Workers (pretty much an American group) were distributists. One of their earliest moves was buying a small farm on Staten Island in New York City (this was about 85 years ago) as part of their program. The Catholic Worker Movement was much like the IWW, or Socialist Party, New Union Party, and other such groups: Their thinking is that their ideas are good and that their ideas will spread. "The people" will organize around their good ideas, and society will change. And, you know, it would be a fine thing if even 1/4 of their good ideas were implemented.
But the trouble with these social idealists is that almost everything about the societies in which they operate is pretty much hostile to their ideals, and if it threatens the dominant paradigm, hostility is expressed concretely. As somebody put it, "The labor movement in the United States didn't die from indifference, it was murdered."
Quoting Agustino
Technically, the mechanics tools are income producing property, not personal domestic property -- unless working on cars is a hobby. (This isn't socialist -- this is the way the US Tax Code looks at things. A mechanic can depreciate the value of his tools; a hobbyist can't.)
As I said, production would be coordinated by producers and consumers, collectively. Maybe cars will have been retired to the dustbin of history. You could design your car, but whether it got built or not would be a collective decision. If you were a car designer, you would need to be part of a product design group. The abolition of private property (factors, stores, railroads, etc.) also means the abolition of private income, and private entrepreneurship.
Own the store where you sell imported cashmere sweaters? Are you out of your mind? Hell, no!
To your average capitalist, this sounds about as perverted as bestiality with under-age animals.
Quoting Agustino
They should be pubic property, even under capitalism, but in the United States they are (and have always been) privately owned. I don't think many miles of railroad were ever built on land which the rail companies actually bought from owners. Usually, the government granted the land to railroads as part of the drive for internal development. The survivor railroads (like Burlington Northern Santa Fe) which have been around more than a century, are still profiting from the land they were given, which is often forested or has coal, oil, or minerals. The railroads also sold off the land they were given in farm-sized lots to immigrants, so they would have customers along the road to ship from, and to.
Quoting Agustino
Inventiveness is a human trait. Entrepreneurship is too, but it requires more learned economic skill. In a distributist economy entrepreneurship (within limits) would make sense. A society run by and for the benefit of the workers would certainly need plenty of inventive thinking, but socialist organization is collectivist, not individualist. Too much entrepreneurship would work against a distributist organized society too, I would think.
Entrepreneurship is the trait par excellent of capitalism. Capitalist economies are organized around facilitating entrepreneurship (including small entrepreneurs being crushed by bigger entrepreneurs).
Harris's video is about human values and in it he claims that the separation between science and values is illusory. He never claims that morals are objective facts. He only broadly outlines a spectrum from the worst possible suffering (earthy suffering because no one can actually conceive any other kind) to the greatest good or happiness, and makes a distinct point that in the horizontal plane there can be equivalent peaks and valleys within this spectrum.
Informed by science, I claimed that values can shift away from being materialistically centered. Some may take exception to this claim, because of the imagined polarity between science and human values.
Well, first of all, I would suggest we get there by getting rid of democracy, which has become, and will continue to be ruled by politicians who are bought and sold by corporations. I think corporatism is the biggest obstacle to getting there. That includes both working for corporations, and the political mechanism that favours them and keeps things rigged in their favour. And to a large extent, corporations have taken on a life of their own - they're no longer controllable at the moment.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Okay, but can the mechanic own that income producing property?
Quoting Bitter Crank
This "collective coordination" sounds quite scary. It reminds me of communism in Eastern Europe. What is this "coordination" going to look like, and who will supervise it?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Okay I think I see. But what if the collective decides that I shouldn't get to build that car, but I go to my garage and over time acquire the tools etc. necessary and build one myself. Is that allowed?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Ahh, but see I think this is a problem for it impinges upon individual liberty too much. Should I be coerced to be part of the product design group if I don't like it and want to work independently?
And what is wrong with private income? If I am a shepherd and I have 10 sheep, why can't I go find comrades around who need wool and sell it to them or exchange it with them for other goods?
Quoting Bitter Crank
>:O >:O No no, I didn't mean to sell already made cashmere sweaters which were produced on the backbone of slave labour in India. What I meant is that I would go to India, buy the Cashmere WOOL, and then sell that wool back home to tailors and other people who needed it.
Quoting Bitter Crank
:-O What's this type of property?! I never heard of it before. Can you have that kind of property?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Right, you see, again the state is the problem. It is because the state is controlled by these corporate interests that strangle the small natural producer and the normal (not capitalist) exchange of goods.
Quoting Bitter Crank
In a distributist society there is no centralised control though (whether by the state or by the collective). Rather it is more like the aim is for the highest number of people to have access to economic freedom - not having to work as a wage slave for others. In other words, freedom to work as they desire.
Now there would be no private banks in distributism. Nor would there be monopolies, corporations or the like. Distributism involves local production meant to satisfy local needs - not mass production meant to simply (apart from other considerations) make more money.
The principle of subsidiarity which is central to distributism would require matters to be settled locally and among the people directly involved - not by some central committee of "the people". So that basically means that what me and my family produce isn't dictated by anyone else, but it's something we decide upon as a family. And similarly for you and for all other groups of people. Things that are the benefit of everyone in a community - I suppose public utilities would fit here - would obviously be decided at the local community level by such a thing as "cooperation" as you call it :P
Now I guess you can see that this system is very much entrepreneurial, since everyone is free and encouraged to act locally in their economies. People can freely form trade relationships with each other, so long as the aim isn't just making money for money's sake, but rather the production of something useful in the needed quantities.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I disagree here. I think capitalism as practiced today at least is profoundly anti-entrepreneurial. There is nothing that makes life more difficult for today's entrepreneur than the combination of state + corporations. Together these two entities create an octopus which strangles the small entrepreneur before he can even get started. It's hard to open a local fast food when McDonald's forces all suppliers not to supply to you if they want to work with them. Who makes all this possible? The state.
Capitalism is organised around facilitating one thing: wage slavery. The end of capitalism isn't all of us becoming entrepreneurs, but rather all of us becoming wage slaves. That's where we're headed now.
And this is even more true in less developed countries where the corruption is 10 times higher than in the US, and the state is 10 times more likely to be bought.
Politicians should be bought and sold; that's their role. Except the currency should be votes not money. I agree with your issue about corporatism, which is a perversion of capitalism. I'd personally start with ending limited liability for all for profit corporations. If something is sufficiently beneficial for society as a whole and not run for profit, it can receive the gift of limited liability. Solves useless daytrading (or HFT nowadays) at the same time.
I'd like to keep democracy though, thank you.
The usual colloquial meaning of 'buying' a politician is not to appoint them by voting them, but to induce them to campaign and vote in parliament for a measure in which they do not believe. The notion of buying a politician with money is about campaign donations that are implicitly conditional on the politician furthering the selfish aims of the donator. Sometimes it is also about bribes, although the boundary between large donations by rent-seekers and bribes seems blurry to me.
Analogously, 'buying' a politician with votes would mean that the politician is induced to support something in which they do not believe, in order to gain more votes. That is the phenomenon of populism, and an example is when politicians demonise refugees because they know that gains votes, even though they know that refugees are not the problem.
Edmund Burke spoke eloquently against this sort of buying with his immortal quote:
'Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.'
in an (unachievable) ideal democracy, parliamentarians would always vote for measures they thought were best, rather than what they thought would gain the most votes at the next election.
I hope you don't mind me pointing out this obscure irregularity of the English language. Your English is amazing. I only wish my French and German were a quarter as good.
Actually, a good share of the United States is public property (28% of the total acreage is government owned forest land for instance). Public Property is held as a public trust by a governmental entity (federal, state, county, municipal, township). It consists of all natural waterways, land owned and managed by a government (like Central Park in New York City), 99.9% of all roads, streets, sidewalks, and highways are owned by a government, from the Federal level down to the township level. This doesn't include military bases.
Anyone may walk down any public sidewalk, drive on any public road, walk on any public park land, and so on. In the west, some public lands are open for use by grazing herds (cattle).
Comprende?
Didn't you say you liked the Shire from Lord of the Rings? Was that you or somebody else?
The shire -- a very low-population rural area--is ideal for distributism. It seems to look back to the English village of the 17th century and earlier, a time when many products were produced at home. There are two critical problems: First, very few people live in self-sufficient villages, these days. Most people don't produce many products at home. They still could, but it seems wildly inefficient. I could, for instance, make several kinds of bar soap--one for laundry and heavy cleaning, one for bathing, and possibly one for hair. But small batch soap making doesn't yield the kind of soap people like to use.
There are far too many people living without much (if any) connection to raw materials that can be turned into useful products. For instance, where would the several million residents of London obtain fiber to make so much as shoe strings for each other? Animal skin for leather? Vegetable or animal fat for soap making? Raw wool or raw cotton to clean, card, spin into yarn, and then weave into cloth? Hides to tan into leather? Food?
Distributism seems more difficult than socialism to implement.
Some people could live in a distributist economy. Most people would have to have died off to make it work (just in terms of the amount of raw material that could be turned into finished products" by highly decentralized household manufacturing. \
Thanks for the compliment by the way. I always feel my English is idiosyncratic. Recently I was working closely with an English QC and we were saying the same thing but he was so much more eloquent. It's amazing how big the gap is when it comes to how a person lives his native language and when it's learned from abroad.
Your English is better than Trump’s although that's not exactly a blazing endorsement. ;)
Distributism can and does include worker owned cooperatives, and other manufacturing businesses that can work on a larger scale. The scale isn't the problem. Distributism doesn't say that everything is to be produced by individuals.
However, we do produce a lot more than we need today. Do we really need 100s of brands of cereal for example?
Your comments on socialism indicate you did not understand the kind of socialism I was talking about.
The example of socialism that you are referencing is the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. Everyone except hard core soviet communists have repudiated--or never accepted--the USSR/PRC/Cuban model of socialism.
Worker ownership and management of the economy -- replacing government altogether -- wouldn't result in a dictatorial system of socialist wage slavery. The whole business of wages and prices would largely be eliminated. "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" might not work out well (it hasn't been tried in a secular setting) but there is no reason to presume that it would result in dictatorship or wage slavery.
The American socialist alternative model (developed towards the end of Marx's life) is democratic self-management, self-ownership of industry, where the workers for example of the Malt-O-Meal breakfast cereal plant would own and operate the now-privately-owned plant. The Malt-O-Meal workers would negotiate with distribution coops to determine what kinds, and how much, cereal to make. There is a difference in producing for human need and producing for profit. If there are orders for 100 tons of cereal, that's all they would make. They wouldn't make 200 tons and try to under cut Post or Kellogg workers; there wouldn't be any rationale to compete that way.
Distributism and worker-owned socialist industry are models with little concrete experience behind them. The details will have to be worked out as experience is gained, just as there were no pre-existing models for capitalism, the industrial revolution, and lots of other things.
That is easy for you to say, but my family lived through Communism, so I don't have many good things to say about it. If I were an adult during Communist times I probably would have had an extremely miserable life.
Someone introverted, religious and independent like me would very likely have ended up a political prisoner or worse. Even if I escaped that, I'd be forced to work with very little independence to go my own path and pursue my own interests. Even today that is largely the case - Im lucky to be able to work as self-employed. Most of the people I know work as wage slaves, having very little control over their type of work and what they have to do to earn a living. They are told when to show up to work, when to leave (sometimes with very long hours), how to dress, and so on so forth. In Communism that was even worse! You had almost no means of escape from that. At least, now there is a path, even if it's narrow and hard to walk.
In Communist times, you probably couldn't have been in a worse place than to be someone like me. So I have built an instinctive revulsion towards it, and towards society's control over the individual.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Okay, so where is the place of artists and creators in your type of socialism? An artist or a creator must create. Must make something new, something different - they must be independent. They cannot be told what to create. They must find it themselves.
In one sense, in terms of production, the entrepreneur is a creator. Steve Jobs said that the customer - or the people - don't know what they want. You have to show it to them first. And that's indeed right. The business of the entrepreneur is largely to discover what the economy needs, and only secondarily to find a way to fulfil it. That's why I think no functional economy can exist without the entrepreneur.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Right but much more important than this is that the Malt-O-Meal workers must first get in touch with those who need cereal and find out how much they need. This is in a sense the job of the entrepreneur - to find out what people need and then provide it to them.
What I think would be best is if entrepreneurship didn't have profit as the criteria of its existence, but rather fulfilling society's needs. There must exist people who think what we need, and then provide it to us. Not everyone can be such a person. If the profit motive is eliminated in the entrepreneur, and we cease having a society where the economy rules our social life instead of our social life ruling the economy, then I think in such a society money would lose its power. To be an influential person in such a society you'd have to be someone who fulfils its needs, not someone with a lot of money.
Money would be treated much like it was in many of the Ancient societies. It would confer only limited powers to its possessor, much more important back then was family background, and social position, which had less to do with money, but your role in sustaining the community.